


Envy

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 00:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17714291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Roy hates Sean, even though he doesn't want to.





	Envy

Sean doesn’t open his arms. He doesn’t offer purification or blessings (not, Roy supposed, because he doesn’t know the rites, however). But he inclines his kingly head, the circlet of wires removed, but still there, and smiles in that way that makes anyone who talks to him feel elevated, and he listens, and he offers advice when he thinks it’s needed...

And Roy hates him.

It’s a bitter kind of hate, it twists over his bones and grows in his lungs and tightens over his stomach, and brings acid to his mouth.

He reminds himself he’s not _that_ , that he could have never been _that_ , that he didn’t belong, it wasn’t for him, he _chose_ to reject it, and he fought to be free of it, and…

And he hates.

Sean doesn’t fumble for words. Sean doesn’t have to wear the grey to _be_ in the grey.

This is Sean not poisoning himself with bitterness. This is Sean allowed to breathe.

And Roy hates him. He hates, and he goes as far away as he can, because his hate can burn down Olympus.

He’s fifteen. He should be above such things. He shouldn’t be...

He _rejected_ it.

He never belonged there.

Sean belongs—here, with his family, his boys, his...

Roy goes away. He doesn’t want to be here—but Scum has invited him personally, and he... He doesn’t want to be here. They say he has a place here in the Valley. He doesn’t feel like he has a place _anywhere_. He doesn’t have a place with anyone.

He hates.

He goes to the funereal well, and sits down on a rock and looks at the niches.

He doesn’t have to understand it to respect it. The Dust bury their dead and create beauty. If anyone ever questions whether they are people, Roy would smash that doubting person’s face right against the mosaic paths of the Valley.

He hates.

It fills him like a hot wave of sickness.

Once, during a gig with Tenacity, he got a poisoned dart to the side. It was a mixture of jelly poison, toad slime and “black sand”. Tenacity had an antidote—but it relied on the poison to not spread quickly—and Roy’s fast metabolism, that usually allowed him to carry on longer than anyone else, to shrug off blows and injuries, carried the poison through his body faster than the antidote could work. He could _feel_ it spread.

Tenacity yelled at him, very pale and crushing his hand.

The hate and envy spread through Roy in a burning wave, choking him. He runs a hand through his hair, again, again, both hands and hooks them on the nape of his neck, trying to focus on the pressure instead of that poison.

He wanted to be free. He wanted to be himself, to be what he chose to be, not what someone chose for him. So why this? Why now?

He knows only one remedy for things like this: leaving.

He needs to leave. To go away.

He doesn’t know how to, anymore.

He burns.

**Author's Note:**

> Roy counts his age in Martian years, not Earthian.


End file.
